S2. E36. Exodus 14:14
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[00:00:00] If you remove yourself entirely, you miss out on that sanctification experience to learn how to be around difficult people, how to be around people that don't understand you, how to let the Lord fight your battles. And you to be still. So if you never put yourself in situations where you may be triggered or difficult situations, then you never learn.
Welcome to Your Daily Bread podcast. I'm your host, Abbie Stasior, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor. My prayer is that these bite-sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food and improve body image, as well as help you grow closer to God. Now, I can't personally heal you, but each week I'll be directing you to the one that can, and that is Jesus. As a disclaimer, I'm not a pastor, but a sister in Christ providing you with some food for thought for you to bring to the Lord and into your quiet time as your daily bread. Let's dig in.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back [00:01:00] to Your Daily Bread podcast. I am so excited for this holiday season. I have been talking with my clients recently about how to prepare for the holidays, not only from a nutritional standpoint, but how do we go back? Into houses environments, be around people that are potentially triggering that bring up old wounds.
And if you are listening to this podcast, I can assume that you are working to heal your relationship with food, improve your relationship with your body, with a faith-based approach. And this may be totally new and there may be people in your life. And I assume that there's probably a lot of people in your life that are not on this journey.
To healing their relationship with food and they themselves are very much stuck in the thick of diet culture. And so I wanted to open up this conversation to give you all some encouragement going into the holidays. Because you might be around people that do not [00:02:00] understand the journey that you're on, do not understand your approach to eating, even if they are also believers, so it may be difficult to go back into some of these scenarios, and I have been listening to a lot of podcasts About family dysfunction and, , going back into situations that are triggering and sometimes I got this from Sarah Jakes Roberts in her sermon Glory Triggers.
And if you're a client of mine, I might have sent it to you recently because I am so obsessed with this sermon. It lives rent free in my head. I will definitely put it in the show notes because it is a worthwhile sermon to listen to, even though it came out a couple years ago. It is so good, but it's called Glory Triggers, and Sarah Jakes Roberts says that sometimes the Lord will put us back in a situation back in an environment that could potentially be triggering to redeem the experiences of your past to show you how far you've come, how far you've healed, how much more rooted you are in [00:03:00] him, where now a situation that would have in the past trigger you.
Now it is going to.
Reveal his glory. Praise God. So I just pray that you have more and more healing experiences where in the past previous holidays, you would've been triggered. It would have led to another wound or another hurt. It would've hit a bruise. But now my prayer for you is that this holiday season that the Lord reveals his glory and heals those parts of your past.
So Father God, thank you for this day. Lord. Thank you for your word. Thank you for never leaving us, nor for thank guests. Thank you for going before us this holiday season and preparing a table. Lord, your word says that you prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies, , and we are just so grateful that you have us covered, that you have us covered.
You've prepared a [00:04:00] beautiful table. You've gone before us, Lord, and you are Jehovah Niecy. You fight our battles, Lord. So we just praise you and thank you that we need only to be still and there's battles that only you can fight. Lord. So I pray that everyone that is listening to this podcast, this episode, that they have ears to hear and that they hear what you have for them personally in this episode.
And I pray that this episode is none of me, all of you, Lord, it is everything that you want to say, Lord. He through me. And thank you Lord for choosing me as a vessel. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. So our anchor scripture for this episode, I have two scriptures that, , I couldn't decide between. So we're gonna do, we're gonna talk about both, but I'll start with one.
First is Exodus 14. 14. And this says, the Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. Now, [00:05:00] that doesn't mean to always be idle or doing absolutely nothing because there are times where the Lord will put on your heart to say something or to do something to be still.
Doesn't mean to be lazy, but it is to wait on the Lord. And we know that with the Israelites, the Lord, gave them fire when he wanted them to go and gave them a cloud of a column of smoke when he wanted them to go too. So he will set your pace. And if you are abiding in him, if you are attuned to him, you will hear from him clearly when he wants you to be still, when he wants you to be silent and not say anything.
Not retaliate, not correct, not clarify, not defend yourself, so that he can do that. And when he does actually want you to step in. So I was listening to this podcast by Dr. Allison Cook recently. I love her work, and I [00:06:00] will link this one up in the show notes as well because it was all about family dysfunction and I just found it to be so helpful and the couple clients that I've sent it to have also found it helpful.
And it said, when you're going back into a situation around family members, you know, our flesh, our urge really wants to just estrange ourselves from them. And there may be situations where. That is the case, but. More often than not, we want to learn how to engage with our family members, but keep healthy boundaries and really discern with the Lord when to engage and when to not, so that you still keep some sort of relationship with your family.
If you remove yourself entirely, you miss out on that sanctification experience to learn how to be around difficult people, how to be around people that don't understand you, how to let the Lord fight your battles. And you to be still. So if you never put yourself in situations where you may be triggered or difficult situations, then you never [00:07:00] learn.
But that's also very difficult. So what Dr. Allison Cook was talking about in the, the man that she was interviewing in the podcast, what they talked about is how you want to be in the house but disconnected from the wifi. So it's like, yes, I'm here, but I'm not always going to be engaging. I'm not always going to be plugged into everything that is going on.
And they said, when you're sitting around the table, observe your family, observe the people that you're with, but don't participate. You don't have to engage in every single thing. They also put a very strong emphasis on praying up before going into situations like this so that you can respond and not be reactive.
So praying for peace, praying for calmness. Will allow you to just be wearing those shoes of the gospel of peace, right? I think whenever you go into a situation that may be triggering, which is typically around the holidays, you wanna be [00:08:00] praying the armor of God every single day that you're there, and do not miss your quiet time with the Lord.
You need to be covered that day before you do anything else. Get with God, pray for peace, pray the armor of God, and then get into the rest of your day. Then engage with people because that will allow you to operate differently with the Lord's strength, his kindness, his compassion, his peace, his patience, and not be so reactive
if family members make comments about your eating or about your weight. About your journey, about whether or not you're on a GLP one, you do not need to engage in these conversations. It is a totally acceptable answer to say, you know what? This is just between me and my dietician. That's between me and my doctor.
I don't want to discuss that now.
Quickly, change the subject. Or you could just say, Hey, you know what? Things are going really well right now, and, I'm really enjoying the journey that I'm on and I'm really working on this with the [00:09:00] Lord. And so thank you for asking. I feel good. And then ask them a question about themselves and change the subject so you can set healthy boundaries.
But I think it's important for us to always be praying to the Lord for help with being misunderstood. Jesus was frequently misunderstood. He was hated. People did not understand what he was doing. Who he was and he was doing so many good things and people still had something bad to say.
So the only person that matters, the only approval that you should seek is the Lord's. And if you are in right standing with him, then all is well. And so that's why I had trouble choosing between what scripture to read for this. Thanksgiving preparation holiday season preparation episode because this also reminds me of Psalm 27 10 that says, though my father and mother forsake me.
Other translations [00:10:00] say though my father and mother reject me. The Lord will always receive me though my father and mother forsake me. The Lord will receive me. I praise God. So regardless of what people in your life are saying, I mean, you can replace father and mother with brother, sister, aunt, uncle, friend, grandparent,
whatever they say, if they reject you, that is okay. . Jesus was literally perfect, fully God, fully man, who knew no sin and still people rejected him. People still had issues with what he was saying. So of course, people are gonna have issues with what you're doing in your life, and it's also important to remember that if you are seeking the Lord and having greater intimacy with him, seeking to do things his way and are really just abiding in the Lord and carrying his joy and his light.
That is going to reveal the darkness in other people. Like everything is a mirror. If people say something to [00:11:00] you, it might feel personal because it's about you, or you're eating, or your body, or how you're living your life. It might feel personal, but it's not. It says more about what's going on with them.
So I really hope that you can receive that it really is a mirror, like when people say things, there's always something deeper going on, and it says more about what's going on with them than with you. So try not to take it so personally and just know that you can cling to the Lord, that you are approved by the Lord and that he is waiting for you with open arms to receive you, and that he does accept you and you're precious and honored in his sight.
And I love the end of Psalm 27 where it says, I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. And then going back to Exodus 14, 14, the Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. So if you get more comfortable with being misunderstood, you don't defend yourself as much and you [00:12:00] allow the Lord to fight for you, allow the Lord to minister to that person for you.
You do not have to solve every problem. You need to release it to him. Now, if the Lord does put on your heart to say something, obviously be obedient to that. But this holiday, take that pressure off yourself to have to defend every single decision that you make. If you wanna get up early and exercise, and people have an issue with that, Hey, where are you going?
If you wanna go up and get a snack between meals and nobody's eating at that time, Hey, what are you? What are you eating? Are you hungry? Yes, I'm hungry. I'm honoring my body. You do not have to justify every single decision that you're making and. Nobody else lives with those decisions that you make with your body other than you.
So if you're eating based on how other people are eating or not eating because other people aren't eating, then you're not eating for the glory of God. You're not taking care of your temple, and that's what you're responsible for. It's the only thing that you're responsible for. And if you are eating, makes other people feel [00:13:00] uncomfortable.
That has more to do with their relationship with food than with yours. You have to honor your body, and that is the most important thing. The other thing that I'll say is that , there's this really famous nun, Miriam, and I heard her in a interview last holiday season by Father Mike Schmitz.
He's a pretty famous Catholic priest, and I, I loved this interview. I'll link that up in the show notes and it talks about how to heal and forgiveness. And one thing that she said that has always stuck out to me, she said, you want to turn your hurts and your wounds. Into compassion. Compassion for the people that hurt you, compassion for yourself, and you want to turn your injuries into intercession.
So instead of being critical, reactive, being on the defense, turn your hurts and your wounds. Into compassion. Because the Lord calls us to be a witness, he does not call us to be a lawyer to defend ourselves. He does not call us to be. The judge does not call us to be the jury. [00:14:00] He calls us to be a witness. So you just need to live out the testimony and be obedient to have the Lord's calling you to steward your body.
So when you reflect on how people have hurt you, you want to take compassion on them because it's coming from a deeper place. It's never what they say. It's always coming from something deeper. So take compassion on them and the people that hurt you. And if you have. Someone in your life that's always making snippy diet culture comments and doesn't like that you're healing your relationship with food.
Know that they are deceived by the enemy. They are blinded by the lie of diet culture. They're in the thick of that, so of course they're not gonna understand because they have the skills over their eyes. The veil is over them. So then you can turn those injuries into intercession. Now you can pray for them.
Like, Lord, take the skills off their eyes. Lift the veil. I just pray in the name of Jesus that you bind up anything that blinds them and we cast that out so that they can see that their ways are not your [00:15:00] ways. And them living in the thick of die culture is not what you intended for them, Lord.
And I just pray that you heal those broken places of them, and so now you can be interceding for them and you feel less bitter towards them for what they said to you because you know it's not. About you, but it's about a hurt and a wound in them. So that can really take the pressure off too. So I pray that this episode was helpful.
I pray that there was something in here that speaks to your specific situation when it comes to your family dynamics. 'cause obviously I don't know all of those personally. But for my clients, just know that I'm always here for you. And that's something that we talk about on our coaching calls is, Hey, what are your family dynamics?
Who, who are you nervous about? What have they said to you in the past? And how can we pray into that and take compassion on them and reframe that and make sure that you're in a position with the Lord where it doesn't matter if your father and mother reject you, the Lord will always receive you. And get you to be still and allow the Lord to fight your battles for you.
[00:16:00] So I pray that everyone has a happy and healthy and holy holiday season, and I will see y'all next week.
